The Famous Royal Navy Volunteer, Bristol

Historical pub that has been turned crafty - taking the worse elements of a crafty conversion. Pumps with no clips. Beer board to work out what you want but the icing on the cake was the urinals converted from metal barrels. Wasn't funny the first time I saw it.

A well reviewed pub and with good reason. On Bristol's lively King Street The Famous Royal Navy Volunteer has been recently refurbished and is now modern gastro/craft beer boozer in style with internal features echoing those of a ship and many nautical pictures around. We visited on a sunny Thursday evening and the doors at the front were open creating a pleasant Continental atmosphere helped along by the numerous and eclectic clientele. It all felt lively and buzzy and the right place to be. The modern and on trend beer boards have been described and are still stocked with a wide variety of offerings. I found the smaller board close to the bar much easier to make sense of but making an ale choice from a trendy board rather than a row of pump clips or a chalk board took a bit of getting used to which may say more about me than the presentation. Cask choices were: London Brew Company Never Mind the Kent Hops, ELB Foundation and Nightwatchman, Vibrant Forest Black Forest Porter and Electric Bear Milk Stout. These are all served from the row of handpumps on the bar and all that we tried were in very good nick although only the Black Forest Porter drew really deep sighs of appreciation. Twelve keg beers were also listed, these being served from taps along the back of the bar. They ranged in strength from 3.2% to 6.8% and included offerings from Wild Beer, ELB, Kernel, Gloucester, Brew by Numbers, New Bristol, Lilleys, Hogans and Wiper and True. A real selection in terms of strengths and styles with local breweries well represented. I liked it here for both the atmosphere and the beer - you certainly won't go thirsty.

Called in this bar as we were doing a crawl of some of Bristol's finest. A shock to the system seeing the huge bank of handpulls at the front of the bar with no pumpclips, and a row of taps at the back for the keg craft beers. A large notice board gave full details of the available beers complete with prices for pints, halves, thirds and two thirds. Also shown was a brief description of the beers. We managed three good cask beers, but the Crafty Devil keg beer was way too cold for my taste.

Huge place that has been given the full craft beer bar makeover, reflecting the hipsterisation of Bristol over the last few years. Whilst some of these work well, others fail by being just too ridiculous and I felt that this was one of them. Twenty beers on in total but don’t go to the bar as all the handpulls are unclipped – the range is listed on the wall. Which is fairly annoying but worse is that the craft keg stuff is also mixed into this list and it isn’t immediately obvious as to how you distinguish between the two. After using some Krypton Factor style puzzle-solving skills I deduced which 8 were cask and which 12 were keg (there were apparently also some ciders but by this point I’d had enough of looking). The prices were pretty outrageous, even if some of them are served in 2/3rds or whatever – and being slap-bang next door to a Sam Smiths outlet was a joke even the best scriptwriter would fail to match. I eventually tried a keg Kernal Table IPA and Siren Undercurrent on cask (which was fine but I’ve had it better) and the £4.10 for the Siren was 90p more than I pay for it in my local in Reading. Staff weren’t really up to drill and there was a bit of faffing about amongst some of the teenage girls. The interior is two large blandly-decorated rooms (some naval prints notwithstanding) connected at the rear, quite heavily stripped out and lacking ambience, bar the comfy chairs and fire at the front of the left hand bar. One positive were the gents, which have metal keg urinals so you can literally imagine yourself filling up the Fosters barrel. The Paul Daniel’s of Bristol’s craft beer pubs – did I like it? Not a lot.

Clearly a traditional pub in the past, the Famous Royal Navy Volunteer has been given the craft beer bar makeover, putting it in direct competition with a number of other venues on this stretch of King Street. The pub has a slightly unusual layout, with two long narrow rooms, each with their own bar, and a wider rear room more suited to dining. Part of the transition to the world of craft beer has been to paint the whole pub in a fairly unappealing, bland colour scheme, which has sadly robbed the place of much of its character. There is a good deal of seating, with wing back armchairs under the front windows, large comfy chairs and button backed banquettes along the left hand side, close to the fireplace which stands on this wall under a large mirror. Some pillars break up the space a little, especially around the bar area, where a number of drinking ledges have been built around pillars and sections of wall. Some of these ledges had modern snob screens on them for some unknown reason. The dining area to the rear is similarly decorated to the main bars and has predominantly high tables and stool seating, a large TV screen which was turned off on this visit, numerous nautical themed pictures and paintings and a large map of the Severn Estuary. The right hand bar was very busy, seemingly being used for a private function, so I didn't get a good look round, although a quick glimpse revealed hop lined walls, another unused TV screen and more nautical pictures on the walls. As others have mentioned, the beer range is detailed on a huge series of boards which use a Brewdog-style confusing pricing structure. It also wasn't clear which beers were on keg and which were cask in the left hand bar, which was odd as a similar board in the right hand bar made a very clear distinction between the two. I don't think I've ever spent so long trying to fathom out which beer I want to order as I did here, but I eventually opted for the Siren Undercurrent, which was a pretty decent pint. Other cask options included Siren Soundwave, Wild Beer Wild Goose Chase, Arbor Triple Hop, New Bristol India and Samhaim, Red Ink 100 and Waen Snowball, with a similarly diverse keg range also listed and a number of real ciders also available. I found this place a little difficult to warm to and wonder if they missed a trick by not presenting a craft beer venue set in a traditional pub environment, which would have made a stronger point of difference from other bars nearby. It worked well as part of a crawl but didn't strike me as the sort of place I'd like to settle down in for a longer session.

I am sure I visited the Royal Navy Bar many moons ago when it was a traditional but quite tired PubCo owned pub, and certainly parked it in the memory as one not to bother returning to. Well that’s all changed and the Royal Navy is now a smart Craft Ale pub, spread over two large dark wood floored rooms with a comfortable mix of wooden and leather seating. As others have described there are 8 un-badged Real Ale pumps and 12 un-badged Craft beer pumps and the main wall of the central serving area houses a large board with the available beers displayed by number. So you make your choice, go up the bar, pass over the chosen number, and hope and trust that the barman pulls you the correct beer. Fortunately the staff in these places seem to be better trained and have more about them than the throng of minimum wage Eastern European serving staff that Punch Taverns City outlets employ and that was the case here, with advice on the beers and tasters freely offered. I went for a half of number 12. Which for the record was Siren Undercurrent at £2.05 for ½. And thus we come to the crux e.g. price levels that even make a Londoner wince. However, even at these high levels there were a fair few in, even discounting our number, so it’s a format that certainly seems to be able to attract. Not the type of place I would choose to spend all evening, even when discounting the requirements to re- mortgage, but I would certainly visit again to see what was on and to use the toilets. Yes I can confirm the Gents is probably the best example of upcycling (modern decorating term I have learnt from all those TV makeover shows) I have seen.